Big D. Ninth-largest city in the United States. Top of the heap in the country’s fourth-largest metropolitan area. Where America’s Team was born. Namesake of a wildly popular television drama that bequeathed the city its own theme song.

Two small Dallas suburbs — University Park and Highland Park — anchor this area a few miles north of downtown Dallas. Self-governing and with their own joint school district, together they comprise the wealthiest patch of real estate in the Dallas-Fort Worth region.

Residents of the area between Northwest Highway and Interstate 30 to the east of U.S. Highway 75 in Dallas fancy themselves a world apart from the glamorous clichés of North Dallas, preferring a more laidback lifestyle but with big-city attractions still close at hand.

The neighborhoods at the center of the city are in the midst of an exciting period of growth and renewal. Construction cranes are a common sight looking out the windows of downtown’s skyscrapers, and once sketchy corners of dilapidated buildings have morphed into the trendiest, most walkable areas in town as more people choose an urban — rather than suburban — lifestyle.

Pursuit of a more suburban lifestyle — bigger homes and yards — within the big city itself is what often draws people to life north of LBJ Freeway.